MEC not liable for HIV claims
The Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that the Kwa-Zulu Natal Health Department is not liable for claims of damages by a woman who alleges that she contracted HIV due to the negligence of paramedics. Photo: Independent Newspapers The Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that the Kwa-Zulu Natal Health Department is not liable for claims of damages by a woman who alleges that she contracted HIV due to the negligence of paramedics. Photo: Independent Newspapers
The KwaZulu-Natal Health Department is not liable for damages claimed by a Gauteng woman, who alleged that she contracted HIV/Aids because of the negligence of paramedics, the Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled.
The woman, who cannot be identified according to law, said she contracted the virus after she was treated by paramedics at an accident scene on the N3 highway near Mooi River in August, 2000.
The woman was a passenger in a vehicle which knocked down a pedestrian. The pedestrian, Mandla Mthalane, died at the scene.
She claimed that paramedics attended to HIV-positive Mthalane and then assisted her with her wounds.
She sued the KZN health MEC for more than R2 million in damages.
In January last year, Judge Chiman Patel ruled that the MEC, as head of the department, was liable for the paramedics, from the provincial ambulance services, having transmitted HIV/Aids to the woman.
Judge Patel did not rule on the amount of money to be awarded to the woman as that was to be dealt with on another date.
However, on Friday, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled there was no evidence to prove that the virus had been transmitted to the woman at the crash scene or that Mthalane had been HIV-positive.
During the trial, the woman’s counsel did not have proof of Mthalane’s HIV status, but admitted into evidence his diary and notes in which he had written the telephone number for an Aids helpline.
Judge Patel found that there was prima facie evidence to draw the inference that Mthalane was HIV-positive because the Aids helpline number was in his diary, there was no other explanation to explain why he had recorded the telephone number and there was a high incidence of the virus in the province.
He rejected the paramedics’ testimonies that they had treated the woman first before attending to Mthalane.
But he accepted the evidence of another passenger in the vehicle who said the paramedics worked on Mthalane before assisting the woman and found that the paramedics had transferred Mthalane’s blood to the woman.
However, appeal court Judge Suretta Snyders, with Judges Leona Theron, Visvanathan Ponnan, Mohamed Navsa, and Shenaaz Meer (acting appeal judge) found that the conclusion that Mthalane was HIV-positive was pure speculation and that other inferences could have been drawn from his possession of the Aids helpline telephone number.
They also found there was no evidence to support the finding that the woman was infected with the virus by the paramedics.
The judges said the paramedics had corroborated each other’s version of events but found that the passenger’s evidence had been fraught with inconsistencies.
The case was dismissed with costs. – The Mercury